Beauty in Words

[I started this last month.]

Hello, friends! Its been a while. What have I been doing? Chasing down and conquering my dreams, if you must know! :) I'm taking a break from all that now, so I have a bit of time to read a little and write to you. I wanted to share something that struck me yesterday while reading Mrs. Dalloway:

Take me with you, Clarissa thought impulsively, as if he were starting directly upon some great voyage; and then, next moment, it was as if the five acts of a play that had been very exciting and moving were now over and she had lived a lifetime in them and had run away, had lived with Peter, and it was now over.
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway p. 47 (Harvest)

Isn't that beautiful? What I love about it is how VW captures the vastness of these two short moments. Time continues while Clarissa is thinking these things, but her thoughts are not restrained by seconds or minutes. I mean really, how can she live through "five acts of play" in a matter of seconds? She can't in time, but in the written word she can. Its like VW is pushing the boundaries of what can be captured in words, or capturing more of reality using words. I use the word "reality" because Clarissa’s thoughts are not abstract and unrelatable (if you haven't imagined going off on some long voyage with the love of your life or lived through five acts of a play [i.e. seen life flash before your eyes] at the sight of someone who represents the road less traveled, then don't read this book), the neat thing is that her thoughts are so true to the human experience! Humans do think like Clarissa above. What comes out to the surface in uttered words is such a small percentage of what we are actually thinking and/or entertaining inside ourselves, knowingly or unknowingly. In a more traditional novel setting, close to all of the passage above would not be able to be expressed without stopping time in the novel (i.e. without Clarissa saying something, full stop, then the author describing her feelings about what she said). Here VW writes in such a way as to keep the flow of time, thoughts, sentences, other characters’ thoughts, etc. going; its really continuous and flowing, which makes it that much closer to reality and that much more beautiful.

"There's always a sort of contempt in speaking," wrote Nietzsche (or something like that). I think that's very true. How can you say what's really going on within our complex selves? Back when I was a musicologist, I thought this aphorism was evidence of the supremity of music among the arts because of its communicative features (it expresses things that words cannot), the supremity of absolute vs. program music, etc. etc.* But now I feel that it means sort of, well, what it says.** There IS a sort of contempt in speaking because 1) Though there are other ways of communicating in life, speech is king; 2) We desire to express the truth (at least in our best moments); and 3) We find that in our best moments (at least the few that I’ve had) that speech is deficient in achieving its primary goal (1 and 2). So what does one do from here? Speak in verse? For as Walter Blythe opined, "There are so many things true in poetry that just aren't true in prose."*** I don't really know if there's something we're supposed to do, per se, except just recognize the fact, and let the arts, like VW's novels, play their part in our lives. Let them express the truths of our insides because we are unable do so ourselves. Let art reveal our humanity to us! I think that’s what its for.

I started this blog because the passage in Mrs. Dalloway made me so happy to be alive. We're so wonderfully complex, such "horrible mess[es] of sadness,"**** but sometimes as bright as the dawn. We’re human! And not “all too” but OH SO HUMAN! To think such things and be such things, is it not life affirming? Its like the passage about the sublime in Kant's Critique of Reason***** where he says that when confronted with a huge giant bear about to eat us, we will then and only then experience the sublime, which is the realization that though the bear will ultimately conquer us physically, mentally we are still supreme, we can think and therefore are sublime by nature. Or I think thats what he meant, not too sure now that I reread the sentence but anyway! We are sublime creatures, so full of life and love.

Sometime during the opera The Magic Flute, there's a part that goes:

Consider well. He is a Prince!
More! He is a Man!

Maynard Solomon uses these lines as a prelude to his book Mozart: A Life and I think its really fitting for a number of reasons. First off, Mozart lived during a time when the purpose of music was changing. Music's goals of Mozart's recent past were of a subserviant nature; music was composed for the purpose of grand state processions, state-sanctioned secular entertainment, religious commemorations, etc. Around Mozart's time, however, composers began to write more music for music's sake, such as symphonies, string quartets, and concerti without programs (meaning without words essentially, or read my first footnote). What are Mozart's most famous (read: the genre in which the composer sought to be/enjoyed being most experimental AND THUS of most value to future generations) pieces? Operas. Same with Haydn (though today he's probably best known for his gazillion symphonies). What are Beethoven's, who is the "next" most famous composer after Mozart, who lived in the "next" era, most famous pieces?****** Opera? Heck no! Symphonies, of course. The reason I share this story is because Mozart, in addition to his music, and the wunderkind legend itself, represents a lot of Enlightenment ideas of reason and the supremity of man, leaving an era of gods, legends, and the like (all of Haydn’s operas were based in classical mythology; Mozart’s most famous operas are about regular people--Don Juan, the poor servant Figaro, freemasons, etc.) behind. Anyway, I like that Mr. Solomon chose to share that quote before he started his book, because I feel like he gets what’s most fascinating about Mozart; that despite the sublimity of his life, his music, all the historiography surrounding him, he was still human, just a man. But oh what a man!

Anyway, I want to encourage you to read some Virginia Woolf! I’ve totally enjoyed Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse is one of my favorites. It’s the first book I’ve ever read that caused visceral sensations within me. I believe in art as visceral experience. Otherwise its just a painting you saw once in a museum and totally forgot about the next second.


*I put a star here because this is pretty murky aesthetic territory and I want to do my one year of graduate school some justice. But for the time being, program music = music written to describe something, such as opera, liturgical music; music with words essentially. Absolute music = music with no program.
**One reason why I left musicology is because I felt that I wasn't able to think straight about things in life; I would always think of them in relation to music. I didn't and don't want to do that. Its like I was floating in a bubble filled with music and couldn't see outside the bubble without having to face the music first.
***If you haven't read past the first two books of the Anne of Green Gables series, be sure to at least read books 7 and 8, Rainbow Valley and Rilla of Ingleside. They're food to the world-weary soul.
****I quote Kirsten Dunst in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." I think she's supposed to be high or something during this part but I really liked the point of her dialogue in that scene.
*****I have no idea why or how I am remembering all these philosophical vignettes, but rest assured, I'm really not that big of a prat (though I love the prattiness of Percy Weasley). I do feel a little like Greg Kinnear's character in "You've Got Mail," though, which is actually a compliment to myself because he's one of me and M1nho's all-time favorite characters. SN: You know in the movie when he and Parker Posey's character are talking about him writing a book and he says "Something relevant to today, like the Luddite movement in 19th century England... We'll talk!" Well I finally got around to hearing what he was actually saying and looked up the Luddites and they were people who would destroy their textile machines in protest of the industrial revolution and its effect on their living conditions. The term is now used to describe anyone against technological change or progress. Isn't that hilarious? Its so fitting with his character! Ah, "You've Got Mail." Its a really tight script I tell you.
******I'm using scare quotes here just in case a musicologist reads this... basically its a little passe to refer to a long line of Germanic composers as the most important and worthy of study in classical music, or to refer to a metanarrative of any kind. I think its dumb, but hey, that's why I'm published on Blogger and not Critical Inquiry.